Turbine engines are used as a primary power source for various kinds of vehicles. Most turbine engines generally follow the same basic power generation procedure. Air is ingested into a fan section, and passes over stator vanes that direct the air into a compressor section to be compressed. The compressed air is flowed into a combustor, mixed with fuel, burned, and directed at a relatively high velocity into a turbine section. The turbine section, which includes one or more turbines each made up of disks and blades extending therefrom, receives the hot gases via stationary blades. The stationary blades turn the gas flow partially sideways to impinge on blades mounted on a rotatable turbine disk. The force of the impinging gas causes the turbine disk to spin at high speeds to produce power.
During operation, the blades of the turbine section are cooled by cooling air diverted from the compressor section. The cooling air flows into a stationary Tangential On Board Injector (TOBI) which then directs the cooling air into holes formed in a coverplate attached to a disk of one of the turbines. The cooling air is contained within the turbine section by labyrinth seals and may flow into a space between the coverplate and the disk. After flowing into the space, the cooling air may flow into a plurality of cooling passages formed between the blades and corresponding slots in the disk. Subsequently, the cooling air enters cooling holes formed in the turbine blades to thereby cool the blades.
Cooling effectiveness of the blades may depend on an amount of cooling air and a pressure level at which the cooling air is supplied. In conventional engines, straight radial pumping vanes have been incorporated between the coverplate and the disk to increase air flow rate and to elevate the pressure of the air. However, as the demand for improved engine efficiency has increased, components of the engine have been subjected to higher temperatures. Consequently, the aforementioned configurations for cooling the components may not be adequate, and the turbine blades may have shortened useful lives.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have an improved blade cooling configuration that may be used to cool blades in turbine engines having increased efficiency. Additionally, it is desirable for the improved blade cooling scheme to be simple and relatively inexpensive to employ. Moreover, it is desirable for the improved blade cooling scheme to be capable of being retrofitted into existing engines. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the inventive subject matter will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the inventive subject matter and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the inventive subject matter.